戀愛言談:告白中的說服、拒絕、與接受之策略研究

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國立臺灣大學文學院語言學研究所碩士論文

Graduate Institute of Linguistics College of Liberal Arts

National Taiwan University Master Thesis

戀愛言談:告白中的說服、拒絕、與接受之策略研究 Romantic Discourse: A Study on the Persuasive, Refusal, and

Acceptance Strategies in Romantic Confessions

江妍

Anita Yen Chiang

指導教授：江文瑜博士 Advisor: Wen-yu Chiang, Ph.D.

中華民國 105 年 7 月 July 2016

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With the precision of an artist we turn my dream into a creation.

It was a journey worth taking and finally we’re at our destination.

Though there aren’t enough words to describe my appreciation, I honor those who assisted with their will, insight, and dedication.

I would first like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis advisor Professor Wen-yu Chiang for her support throughout my graduate studies. Her guidance and encouragement have helped me immensely in finding my own voice as a young linguistics researcher. Without her trust and support, I would not have the chance to explore my potential and challenge myself to conducting innovative and pioneering studies in the field of linguistics.

Besides my advisor, I would also like to thank my thesis committee members, Professor Hsi-Yao Su and Professor I-Ni Tsai, for their insightful comments and valuable suggestions that greatly improved this research. I am truly grateful for the continuous support and encouragement Professor Hsi-Yao Su has given me over the years. I thank her for being one of the first professors to enlighten me of the countless possibilities language and linguistics can do to enrich the lives of people. Also, my heartfelt thanks go to Professor I-Ni Tsai for taking me a step further into the world of discourse analysis and offering me helpful advice in solving problems I encountered during the course of this study.

Furthermore, I would like to give many thanks to all the professors at National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) that have believed in me, given me guidance, and encouraged me to further pursue my studies. In particular, I appreciate the support and assistance from Professor I-Wen Su, Professor Chia-Rung Lu, and Professor Shu-Kai Hsieh at NTU. The solid training I received in their classes have allowed me to further equip myself with research abilities that help me thrive as a young researcher. My profound gratitude also goes to Professor Sun-chieh Liang, Professor Mary A. Goodwin, Professor Yeu-Ting Liu, and Professor Yi Chien Lee at NTNU. Throughout the years, they have continued to inspire and motivate me to be better and have helped me greatly in becoming an independent and curious thinker that has a strong care and love for people and the human world.

I thank my fellow research group mates in the Wellbeing Lab at NTU: Iju Hsu, Saito Hayato, Debbie Chang, Jenah Liao, Wen-Yi Huang, and Umy Chang for the stimulating discussions, for the times we worked together before deadlines, and for all the fun we have had in the last three years. I would also like to thank my best friends

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love, friendship, support, and encouragement over the years. The memories we share and the bond that we have will always be something that I cherish wholeheartedly.

Special thanks and love go to TK for supporting me and going on this wonderful journey with me. I thank you, for your warmth and your compassion.

Finally, I would like to express my eternal love and deepest gratitude to my family.

My accomplishments would not have been possible without them. I hope to always do them proud. I thank my beautiful mother, Viki Yuan, for her unconditional love and care.

She guides me with her wisdom and inspires me to be the best that I can be. I am also grateful for my father, Johnny Chiang, for his unwavering support and encouragement.

His open-mindedness and vision have allowed me to be even more confident of fighting for my dreams. Lastly, my genuine thanks go to my handsome brother, Clive Chiang.

He is the sweetest and most considerate younger brother a sister could ever ask for. I thank him, for being an awesome brother, a great friend, a spirited cheerleader, and a trustworthy “mascot” that always brings me luck when I need it the most.

To all the people that have had an impact on my life and have helped me become the person I am today, thank you so much and I love you with all my heart.

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ABSTRACT

The study examines romantic confession as an interactive and co-constructed process of persuasion between romantic confessor and confessee. Specifically, we explore on a micro level the persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies devised by confessor and confessee to achieve communicative purposes. Furthermore, the study investigates on a macro level the discourse structure of romantic confession to demonstrate further the effects of conversational interaction and co-construction between romantic confessor and confessee. It is the goal of the current study to provide new insights on the important role language plays in romantic relationships and suggest the establishment of Romantic Discourse as a field of study in linguistics research.

Persuasion, a topic of study that can be traced back to its classical tradition in Greek philology, has long been recognized as the essence of rhetoric and is found to lie at the heart of communication (Burke, 1969; Hartelius and Browning, 2008). In the context of romantic confession, the confessor’s intention and goal of communication are to persuade his/her romantic interest into establishing a relationship with him/her. And as for the confessee, the objective is to either reject or accept the persuasion initiated by the confessor. Thus, romantic confession can also be viewed as a form of deliberate persuasive communication in which the interlocutors adopt verbal and nonverbal strategies to influence each other’s views and behaviors.

As romantic confession is a collaborative and co-constructed discourse between confessor and confessee, the present study analyzes and examines the data both qualitatively and quantitatively with concepts drawn from Conversation Analysis (CA) and communication studies to probe into the conversational interaction between interlocutors in the process of romantic persuasion. Based on the twenty-hour discourse data collected from the popular reality dating TV show, Perfect Dating, we propose models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies, in which communicative strategies are categorized into (1) reward-based strategies, (2) punishment-based strategies, (3) altruism-based strategies, and (4) rationale-based strategies to represent and discuss the patterns of strategy use in the context of romantic confession. We find that interlocutors in our data prefer using rationally or emotionally appealing strategies such as reward-based or rationale-based strategies to persuade, reject, or accept in romantic confessions.

Our study also develops a general structure of romantic confession to further reveal the characteristics of the conversational romantic confession discourse. To be more specific, four stages are identified in the discourse of romantic confession: (1) setting

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and (4) coming to a decision. The roles of the interlocutors are found to shift between these stages and each of these stages serves different purposes in the discourse of romantic confession.

Through proposing models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies to study romantic confession on a micro level as well as developing the general structure of romantic confession discourse on a macro level, our study aims to illustrate the context-specific characteristics in romantic confession. In addition, by providing insightful analyses and findings in our study, we seek to demonstrate the crucial role language plays in the development of romantic relationships. It is our goal to direct attention to the discourse between (potential) romantic partners in the field of linguistics and propose the importance for a line of research to contribute to the study of romantic discourse.

Keywords: romantic discourse, romantic confession, romantic persuasion, persuasive strategies, refusal strategies, acceptance strategies, conversation analysis, co-construction, discourse structure

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摘要

本研究將告白視為告白者與被告白者間互動且共同建構的說服過程。本論文以微觀的角度探討告白者與被告白者如何利用說服、拒絕、和接受策略達成溝通目的，也以宏觀的視角檢視告白的言談結構，進而觀察告白者與被告白者間會話互動和共同建構等現象，本論文旨在彰顯語言在戀愛關係中所扮演的重要角色，

並提倡在語言學中建立戀愛言談 (Romantic Discourse) 為一研究領域。

說服 (Persuasion)，早在古典希臘哲學時期已被尊為修辭學的精髓和溝通的核心 (Burke, 1969; Hartelius and Browning, 2008)；在告白的情境之中，告白者的溝通目的為說服心儀對象與之建立戀愛關係，而對於被告白者來說，主要的目標則是拒絕或接受告白者的說服；因此，告白亦是一種說服溝通的形式，在溝通過程當中，談話者採用語言或非語言策略進而影響對方的看法及行為。

本研究以質化和量化的方式分析及檢視語料，也由於告白是透過告白者與被告白者間合作及共同建構而成的言談，我們參考會話分析和溝通研究的理論來深入觀察談話者在戀愛說服 (Romantic Persuasion) 中的會話互動。根據從真人實境戀愛告白節目《非常完美》所蒐集到二十小時的語料，我們提出說服、拒絕、及接受策略的三個理論模型，其中，我們將這些策略分為 (1) 獎勵式策略、(2) 處罰式策略、(3) 利他式策略、(4) 說理式策略，以進一步反映及討論告白情境中的策略使用與模式。研究結果發現，會話者傾向訴諸正向的理性及感性策略如獎勵式策略或說理式策略等方式以期在告白中達到說服、拒絕、或接受等溝通目的。

本論文也提出了告白的整體結構以展現告白言談中會話的特質。研究結果顯示，告白言談主要可分為四個階段：(1) 場景鋪陳、(2) 印象建立和情感告白、(3) 討論與協商、(4) 決議確立；在這個言談結構之中，每一個階段都有不同的溝通目的，會話者的角色也會隨之而有所調整與改變。

透過提出告白中的說服、拒絕、和接受策略的理論模型，以及告白的整體言談結構，本研究深入地描繪了告白語境中的會話及言談特質；除此之外，我們期待能藉著本論文的研究結果，來顯示語言在人類戀愛關係發展中的重要性，使語言學界能夠更重視伴侶的言談，進而使戀愛言談相關研究在未來能蓬勃發展。

關鍵字：戀愛言談、告白、戀愛說服、說服策略、拒絕策略、接受策略、會話分析、共同建構、言談結構

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TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS

Unit

Intonation unit LINE

Truncated intonation unit —

Truncated word -

Speaker

Speaker/turn attribution SPEAKER;

Transitional Continuity

Final .

Continuing ,

Appeal ?

Manner/Quality

Manner <MANNER> unit>

Metatranscription

Gestures ((GESTURE))

Pause

Long …

Short ..

Latching =

Lag (prosodic length) :

Others

Text omission […]

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Discourse structure of romantic confession (macro aspect) ... 14 Figure 2. Discourse structure of romantic confession (macro + micro aspects) ... 151

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Persuasive strategies used by romantic confessors ... 42

Table 2. Refusal strategies used by romantic confessees ... 46

Table 3. Acceptance strategies used by romantic confessees ... 49

Table 4. Token numbers and percentages of persuasive strategies used by confessors . 53 Table 5. Average numbers of persuasive strategies used per confession ... 53

Table 6. Token numbers and percentages of persuasive strategies used by successful/ unsuccessful confessors of both genders ... 55

Table 7. Average numbers of persuasive strategies used by successful/unsuccessful confessors of both genders per confession ... 57

Table 8. Average numbers of persuasive strategies used per confession (by types)... 57

Table 9. Token numbers and percentages of refusal strategies used by confessees ... 93

Table 10. Average numbers of refusal strategies used per confession ... 93

Table 11. Average numbers of refusal strategies used per confession (by types) ... 93

Table 12. Token numbers and percentages of acceptance strategies used by confessees ... 122

Table 13. Average numbers of acceptance strategies used per confession ... 122

Table 14. Average numbers of acceptance strategies used per confession (by types) .. 122

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Overview

The study examines romantic confession as an interactive and co-constructed process of persuasion between romantic confessors and confessees. Specifically, we explore on a micro level the persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies devised by confessors and confessees to achieve communicative purposes. Based on the twenty-hour discourse data collected from the popular reality dating TV show, Perfect Dating, we propose models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies to represent

and discuss the patterns of strategy use in the context of romantic confession. We find that interlocutors in our data prefer using rationally or emotionally appealing strategies such as reward-based or rationale-based strategies to persuade, reject, or accept in romantic confessions. Furthermore, the study investigates on a macro level the discourse structure of romantic confession to demonstrate further the effects of conversational interaction and co-construction between romantic confessor and confessee. It is the goal of the current study to provide new insights on the important role language plays in romantic relationships and suggest the establishment of Romantic Discourse as a field of study in linguistics research.

The present study examines romantic confession as Romantic Persuasion and further proposes models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies to explore the

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tactics adopted by confessor and confessee to achieve communicative purposes.

Persuasion, a topic that has been considered to be important in the study of language and rhetoric’s ever since the time of ancient Greece, is found to be pervasive in

everyday conversation (Burke, 1969; Hartelius and Browning, 2008). In the context of romantic confession, the confessor’s intention and goal of communication is to persuade

his/her romantic interest into establishing a relationship with him/her. And as for the confessee, the objective is to either reject or accept the persuasion initiated by the confessor. Thus, romantic confession can also be viewed as a form of deliberate

persuasive communication in which the interlocutors adopt verbal and nonverbal strategies to influence each other’s views and behaviors.

Our study also investigate the data from a more general perspective and proposes a discourse structure of romantic confession to further illustrate the conversational

characteristics of the romantic confession discourse. As stated by Dascal (1992:35),

“Some ‘conversations’ (e.g. a doctor-patient consultation; a round-table debate; a

cross-investigation of a witness) are obviously ‘structured’ (i.e. they have a clear

sequencing pattern, a more or less well-defined purpose and topic, and more or less accepted criteria of relevance).” Romantic confession, one of the most important

conversations that facilitates and enables relationship establishment between potential couples, is found to demonstrate a complex and non-linear structure (See Chapter 6 for

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more discussions on the discourse structure of romantic confession).

Previous studies in the field of romantic relationship and relationship initiation have supported the view that conversation and communication are critical in the development, maintenance, and improvement of relationship (Guerrero and Mongeau, 2008; Derlega, Winstead, and Greene; 2008). In language and linguistics studies, however, only a relatively small number of studies have been conducted in the past to examine the language and conversation between lovers and couples (Channell, 1997;

Gould, Kurzman, and Dixon, 1994; Pasupathi, Lucas, and Coombs, 2002; Veroff et al., 1993; Ranganath, Jurafsky, and McFarland, 2013; Wilkins and Gareis, 2006). Unlike some of the more developed subfields of discourse analysis studies (political discourse, clinical discourse, pedagogical discourse, etc.), the language and conversation between romantic partners are seldom studied by linguists due to the difficulty of data collection.

Thus, many questions regarding how language can be used to establish, maintain, and improve the quality of our love life are still left to be answered. Fortunately, with the increasing popularity of romantic TV reality shows in recent years, linguistics researchers now may have better opportunities to further explore and investigate the role

language plays in romantic relationship.

Since television has become the “dominant medium of social discourse and representation in our society” (Hall, 1982: 75), popular TV shows might become a good

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platform for linguistic researchers to collect the type of data that may otherwise be comparatively more unattainable in everyday life. In the case of the current study, the discourse data of romantic confession is acquired from the reality dating TV show – Perfect Dating. Through conducting a study with a huge amount of conversational data

(i.e., approximately 20 hours), we seek to contribute to the field of romantic discourse analysis and provide new insights on the important role language plays in romantic relationships. It should be noted that although reality TV shows can be good medium for

linguistics researchers to study contexts and topics that are usually private and exclusive, the “double-framing” effect of reality TV shows (i.e., interlocutors on the show are

oriented to the co-present interlocutors as well as the general audience watching the show) may still result in dynamics that are different from everyday conversation.

However, it is for that very nature, the current study was able to gain a perspective on

the more “preferred” ways to persuade, reject and accept in a romantic confession. That is, since the interlocutors also have to consider the “imagined” public opinion on their

communicative behaviors, they may tend to communicate in ways that are more “ideal”

and “socially acceptable.”

In short, our study aims to illustrate the context-specific characteristics in romantic confession through proposing models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies to study romantic confession on a micro level as well as developing the general

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structure of romantic confession discourse on a macro level with data collected from the romantic reality TV show. In addition, by providing insightful analyses and findings in our study, we seek to demonstrate the crucial role language plays in the development of romantic relationships. It is our goal to direct attention to the discourse between (potential) romantic partners in the field of linguistics and propose the importance for a line of research to contribute to studying romantic discourse (romantic confessions, phone calls or text messages between lovers, wedding proposals, breakup conversations, etc.).

1.2 Motivation

This section introduces the motivation behind studying romantic confessions as well as the reason for analyzing the data from the perspective of persuasion, refusal, and acceptance.

1.2.1 Why Romantic Confession?

Romantic love and relationship are essential to the life of human beings.

Throughout history, related topics have received much scholarly attention in various disciplines. It is generally agreed by researchers that the formation of romantic relationship serves important biological, psychological, evolutionary, and social purposes to humanity. In the fields of sociology, psychology, communication, and

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relationship studies, many researches have been conducted to examine topics such as dating attitude and behavior (Alksnis, Desmarais, and Wood, 1996; Holmberg and MacKenzie, 2002; Bartoli and Clark, 2006; Gao, 2001; Ferng and Yen, 2007; Laner and Ventrone, 2000; Marston, Hecht, and Robers, 1987; Yen, Liu, and Cheng, 2009), relationship development and maintenance (Afifi and Lucas, 2008; Cupach and Spitzberg, 2008; Derlega, Winstead, and Greene, 2008; Knee and Bush, 2008; Graziano and Bruce, 2008; Guerrero and Mongeau, 2008; Metts and Mikucki, 2008; Perlman, 2008; Seki, Matsumoto, and Imahori, 2002; Stafford and Canary, 1991; Wenzel and Kashdan, 2008), and the influence of media on romantic relationships (Ferris et al., 2007; Holmes, 2007). These studies, although not designed specifically to examine the effects of language and communication on romantic relationships, have pointed out the important roles language and communication play on building, maintaining, and improving the romantic life of human beings.

Among all the types of conversations between romantic partners, romantic confession, as one of the earliest persuasions/conversations that allows a romantic relationship to be established, is extra crucial in Asian dating culture. When dating, Asian daters tend to establish an exclusive romantic relationship with a person first before engaging in the “actual” process of dating or sexual activities¹. As pointed out in

1 It should be noted that hookups and one night stands are not discussed in our study. We consider

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Ferng and Yen’s (2007) study on the attitude and experience of dating and sexual

behaviors among Taiwanese university students, the majority of the participants in their study have indicated that they would be more comfortable to go out on a date with someone after knowing or befriending that person for two to six months. Furthermore, intimate behaviors such as kissing, caressing upper and lower parts of the body, and having sex are generally considered as behaviors that are unacceptable before a romantic relationship has been established (Ferng and Yen, 2007). As a result, romantic confession is crucial because it allows the possible achievement of two important goals at the initial stage of a romantic relationship – confessing one’s romantic interest and willingness to commit to another person and formulating a romantic relationship.

Without this conversation between potential partners, further romantic development for the two to advance as a couple would be quite unlikely to happen in Asian dating cultures.

Past researches in the field of relationship initiation have also supported the view that conversation and communication are crucial in the developing stages of romantic relationships. In order for acquaintances or friends to move on to the next level and become lovers, they would need to rely on communication and self-disclosure to deepen the bond and make that friends-to-lovers transition (Guerrero and Mongeau, 2008;

hookup are different and should not be discussed as similar concepts (Bogle, 2008; Glenn and Marquardt,

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Derlega, Winstead, and Greene; 2008). As a result, studies on romantic confession, a conversation that allows one to not only disclose his or her feelings towards another person but also propose romantic relationship establishment, will provide us with further insights into the dynamics between language, love, and romantic relationship and how romantic relationships are formed through persuasion and negotiation. For this reason, the focus of our study is the discourse of romantic confession.

1.2.2 Why Persuasion, Refusal, and Acceptance?

Persuasion, a topic of study that can be traced back to its classical tradition in Greek philology, has long been recognized as the essence of rhetoric and is found to lie at the heart of communication (Burke, 1969; Hartelius and Browning, 2008). According

to Burke (1969: 72), “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is meaning, there is persuasion.” These words illustrate the pervasiveness of

persuasion in both deliberate persuasive communication as well as everyday conversation. Many studies have also been conducted to examine the verbal and nonverbal strategies used by interlocutors in persuasion and propose models to illustrate the characteristic of persuasions in different situational contexts (See Chapter 2 for further review on this topic).

In the context of romantic confession, since the main goals for a confessor to

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the establishment a romantic relationship, it can be seen that a romantic confession is a process of persuasion in which the confessor is trying to convince the confessee to form

a romantic relationship with him/her while the confessee is attempting to reject or accept the confessor’s offer. Thus, throughout the discourse of romantic confession, the

confessors’ utterances are in fact specific strategies devised in order to convince the confessees to take the offer of becoming romantically involved, whereas the confessees’

utterances are strategies adopted to co-construct and direct the confession into an ending in which the decision of relationship establishment will be made.

In the field of conversation analysis and communication studies, researches of persuasive strategies and refusal strategies are often conducted to investigate human behaviors and verbal interactions in different contexts (Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Chen and Zhang, 1995; Dillard, Segrin, and Harden, 1989; Harper and Hirokawa, 1988; Kitzinger and Frith, 1999; Liao, 1994; Marwell and Schmitt, 1967;

Newton and Burgoon, 1990; Schenck‐Hamlin Wiseman, and Georgacarakos., 1982;

Takahashi and Beebe, 1987; Yang, 2008). These studies provided us further views on how communicative functions (i.e., persuasion, refusal, and acceptance) are achieved through strategic planning. Nonetheless, these researches often remained on a semantic or pragmatic level and concentrated on either persuasion or refusal. Although examples of strategies were given, the contexts in which these strategies were used were not

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analyzed in detail. Furthermore, these studies had focused primarily on the person who conducted the persuasion or refusal, so the effects of interaction and co-construction between interlocutors were not examined (See Chapter 2 for more details). In order to bridge research gaps and to provide a thorough analysis on the discourse of romantic confession, it is the goal of the current study to examine the role of both interlocutors from the perspective of persuasion, refusal, and acceptance. We aim to inspect how confessors and confessees adopt strategies to achieve communicative purposes as well as study the effect of interaction and co-construction on a discourse level in romantic confessions.

1.3 Research Questions

With a view to bridging the research gap on the study of language and romantic relationship and further establish romantic discourse studies in the field of discourse analysis, the present study aims to investigate the persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies adopted in romantic confessions. The focus of this study is to analyze what the use of these strategies reveals about the interactive process and the co-construction between confessors and confessees, and to investigate the structure of the discourse of romantic confession. The specific research questions are:

1. What are the persuasive strategies used by confessors in romantic confessions?

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2. What are the refusal and acceptance strategies used by confessees in romantic confessions?

3. What is the structure of the discourse of romantic confession?

4. What do the strategy selection and the discourse structure of romantic confession reveal about the interaction and co-construction between romantic confessors and confessees?

1.4 Significance

This study is one of the first comprehensive and in-depth studies on the discourse of romantic confession with such a huge amount of data collected from the reality TV dating show. On a micro level, analyses on the functions and usages of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies adopted by confessors and confessees in romantic confessions are discussed in details. We adopt concepts from conversation analysis studies and propose models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies that represent the communicative strategies used by confessors and confessees in our data.

Furthermore, on a macro level, the discourse structure of romantic confession is developed to reveal the overall structure as well as the effect of interaction and co-construction between interlocutors in different stages of the romantic confession discourse.

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The simplified version of the three models we proposed are listed below (See

Chapter 3 for more details on the definition of each strategy in the three models):

Model of Persuasive Strategies Used by Romantic Confessors Reward-Based Strategies: ingratiation, promise, and debt.

Punishment-Based Strategies: aversive stimulation, guilt, and warning.

Altruism-Based strategies: counsel, favor, and altruism.

Rationale-Based Strategies: direct request, logic, commonalities, self-promotion, hinting, and determination.

Model of Refusal Strategies Used by Romantic Confessees

Reward-Based Strategies: condition for future acceptance, alternative, thanks, compliment, and empathy.

Punishment-Based Strategies: threat and criticism.

Altruism-Based Strategies: help-seeking, let requester off the hook, and statement of regret.

Rationale-Based Strategies: direct refusal, reason, challenge, and avoidance.

Model of Acceptance Strategies Used by Romantic Confessees Reward-Based Strategies: ingratiation, promise, and thanks.

Rationale-Based Strategies: direct acceptance, hinting, and challenge.

With the analysis of strategy selection and the proposal of the persuasive, refusal, and acceptance models in our study, we are able to come up with findings that contribute to the field of romantic discourse and provides us with a better understanding on how relationship can be initiated and established through language. To be more specific, confessors and confessees in the data are found to favor devising strategies that

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are rationally or emotionally appealing in romantic persuasion (See Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 for more discussions on the strategies that are designed to rationally and emotionally appeal to the interlocutors in romantic confessions). Although logos (reason) and pathos (emotion) have long been established by philosophers and researchers to be basic elements of a good and effective persuasion (Aristotle, 1954; Higgins and Walker, 2012; Holt and MacPherson, 2010; Zinn and Manfredo, 2000), our research is one of the first studies to identify the importance of incorporating both rational and emotional appealing components in the context of romantic confession. It is also demonstrated through our analyses of the strategies in our models that romantic confessors and

confessees should be tactical in terms of strategy selection and observant of the interlocutor’s responses if they wish to increase the chances of achieving

communicative goals.

Our study has also proposed a discourse structure of romantic confession that identifies the important conversational stages in romantic confession and allows the further discussion on the collaborative and co-constructed nature of the romantic confession discourse. Generally speaking, four stages are found in the discourse of romantic confession: (1) setting the scene, (2) making impressions & confessing feelings, (3) discussion & negotiation, and (4) coming to a decision (See Figure 1). The roles of the interlocutors shift in between these stages and each of these stages serve

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different purposes in the romantic confession discourse. The conversational nature of romantic confession being a process of persuasion between interlocutors results in a more complex and non-linear structure in which certain stages may be skipped or returned to for different communicative purposes. (See Chapter 6 for more discussions on the discourse structure of romantic confession).

Figure 1. Discourse structure of romantic confession (macro aspect)

To sum up, the findings from the study have important implications on the ways to persuade, reject, or accept in a romantic confession for confessors and confessees. The results have shown that the most preferred ways to achieve communicative goals in the context of a confession would be to include both emotional appeal and logical reasoning during the process. Moreover, it is important to be flexible and pay attention to the

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effects of conversational interaction and co-construction so that strategies can be tactfully devised in different stages to achieve communicative purposes. It is the goal of the current study to establish romantic discourse studies as an important field of study in linguistic research so that more light can be shed on the interplay between language, love, and romantic relationships.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Chapter 2 provides a review of the studies of romantic discourse as well as the basic ideas and findings in past literature of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies. Chapter 3 outlines the method, theoretical framework, and the proposed models adopted in the analyses of romantic confessions. In Chapter 4, thorough analyses and discussions on the persuasive strategies used by romantic confessors in the data are presented. Moreover, Chapter 5 offers detailed analyses and discussions on the refusal and acceptance strategies adopted by romantic confessees in the data. In Chapter 6, the discourse structure of romantic confession is developed and further discussed. Finally, Chapter 7 concludes with a summary of major findings and contributions of the study as well as suggestions for future studies.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Romantic Discourse

The study of language, love, and romantic relationships is an important topic of research for such studies can provide us with further understanding of the role language and communication plays in human love life and romantic relationships. Our study, specifically, aims to propose the establishment of romantic discourse as a topic of study in linguistics research to explore the dynamics between language, love, and romantic relationship.

In romantic relationships, many important stages are often built upon self-disclosures, conversations, and discussions between potential partners (romantic confessions, phone calls between lovers, wedding proposals, breakup conversations, etc.). Furthermore, as pointed out in a review on the emotional, cognitive, and psychological aspects of romantic love (Noller 1996), verbally expressing love and emotional support is one of the key elements to a happy and successful relationship.

Therefore, establishing romantic discourse as a field of research in linguistics and communication studies would allow more attention to be drawn to this area of study;

and implications on how people can enhance their love life through language can be made.

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out to examine the ways to express love. In a cross-cultural study conducted by Seki, Matsumoto, and Imahori (2002), the differences between the expressions of intimacy between Americans and Japanese people are examined. For the Americans, greater openness, expressiveness, and physical contact are used in expressing intimate feelings, whereas greater understanding within the couple is found to be a major way for Japanese couples to show intimacy. Although the behavioral patterns may seem

different, these expressions of love and intimacy between couples are often manifested in couples’ discourse and communication. Furthermore, a small number of studies on couple’s narrative (Gould, Kurzman, and Dixon, 1994; Pasupathi, Lucas, and Coombs,

2002; Veroff et al., 1993) or domestic discourse (Cohan and Kleinbaum, 2002; Maher and Singleton, 2003; Sanford, 2003) have also been conducted to investigate how romantic partners communicate in different situational contexts. Although previous studies are found to investigate the communication between lovers, the difficulty to collect everyday data from the conversation of (potential) couples, and especially in the period when the relationship is slowly beginning to blossom, had resulted in the comparatively rare studies on how romantic relationships are initiated and maintained from a conversational perspective.

A study conducted by Channell (1997) on love and desire on the telephone is one of the few studies that was able to analyze lovers’ conversation and its function of

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relationship maintenance with real-life data. The data of Channell’s study (1997) came from a full transcript of a private conversation between members of the British royal family published by the British newspapers. The author wrote in her paper that although the data had already been published by newspapers, there might still be doubts regarding using such data. This research has once again demonstrated the difficulty to acquire everyday data in the study of romantic discourse. Nonetheless, the popularity of reality dating TV shows in recent years may perhaps provide researchers with a chance to investigate further the interplay between language, love, and romantic relationship.

As discussed in Chapter 1, TV shows are able to reflect certain level of reality.

According to Bignell (2005: 62), “Television always aims to contain and explain the

real, especially through the form of narrative, in order to comply with expectations of

cultural verisimilitude (adopting realisms grounded in cultural understandings of the real).” Studies have also found that viewers’ behaviors may be influenced by TV shows

and that people may extracts parts of the shows to compare and incorporate into their personal lives (Bandura, 1994; Ferris et al., 2007; McKinley, 1997). Since TV shows, and especially reality TV shows, may have an impact on the viewers’ perceptions of reality (Cohen, 1997; Gerbner et al., 1994) and are becoming an important source for learning interpersonal behaviors (Bandura, 1994; Talbot, 1995), they provide a platform for researchers to observe and investigate topics (i.e., those within the scope of romantic

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discourse) that may otherwise be more exclusive and less accessible in everyday life.

However, it should be noted that the actions and behaviors of the participants in romantic reality TV shows may still be different from the daily interactions of people

off-camera due to the effect of “double-framing” (Thornborrow and Morris, 2004).

Participants on reality TV shows may have higher awareness in maintaining a “good”

identity and/or image on TV than in real life since they orient themselves to not only the co-present participants but also the general audience that may be watching the show. As a result, with the large amount of data collected from the romantic reality TV show in our study, we examine romantic persuasion and propose models and discourse structure that may be representative of a more “ideal” and “preferred” process of romantic confession. The findings and implications of our study may provide new sights on how communicative goals can be skillfully achieved in romantic confessions, and it is also our goal to encourage more studies in the field of romantic discourse so that we can gain further understanding on the role of language in establishing, maintaining, and improving romantic relationship.

2.2 Persuasion

Persuasion is the interactive process by which one attempts to influence another person’s beliefs, attitudes, motivations, or behaviors to varying degrees (O’Keefe 2002).

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As discussed earlier, the study of persuasion can be traced back to as early as ancient Greece and its importance has always been noticed by researchers interested in the art of discourse. Many studies in the fields of linguistics, communication, psychology, and sociology have been conducted in the past to examine the subject of persuasion and its related terms such as influence, compliance-gaining, request, etc. One of the earliest studies on the messages of persuasion was conducted by sociologists Gerald Marwell and David Schmitt in 1976. Their study established 16 types of compliance-gaining techniques that later inspired persuasion researchers to develop and extend the models of the verbal and nonverbal strategies used in persuasive communication as well as investigate the situational differences in strategy selection (Burgoon et al., 1982; Burke, 1989; Harper and Hirokawa, 1988; Miller, 1983; Miller et al., 1977; Newton and Burgoon, 1990; Schenck-Hamlin, Wisemen, and Georgacarakos, 1982).

Some researchers have conducted typological studies that categorize the strategies into clusters in their models to gain a better understanding about the structure of strategy use in the context of persuasion (Erftmier and Dyson, 1986; Knudson, 1994;

Harper and Hirokawa, 1988; Miller et al., 1977; Newton and Burgoon, 1990;

Schenck-Hamlin, Wisemen, and Georgacarakos, 1982; Weiss and Sach, 1991). For instance, Schenck-Hamlin, Wisemen, and Georgacarakos (1982) presented the distribution of compliance-gaining properties in a tree diagram and grouped the

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strategies into ones that are based on sanction, need, explanation, and circumvention in their study. Alternatively, in Harper and Hirokawa (1988), the 19 influence strategies in their model were further categorized into reward-based, punishment-based, altruism-based, and rationale-based strategies. In their study, male managers are found to rely more on punishment-based strategies, whereas female managers tend to rely more often on altruism-based and rationale-based strategies when convincing subordinates to agree to an obligatory request. In creating more structural classifications of persuasive strategies based on their functions or properties, researchers were able to carry out more systematic analyses and in-depth discussions on the overall tendencies of strategy use across different situational contexts of persuasive communication.

Depending on the situational contexts, the identities of the speakers, and the goals the persuader wants to achieve, different preferences and patterns of persuasive strategy use can be identified from previous literature. Persuasion studies that focus on the effects of gender (Harper and Hirokawa, 1988; Kline, 1994; Procter, Schenck-Hamlin, and Haase, 1994), age (Erftmier and Dyson, 1986; Weiss and Sach, 1991), culture (Burgoon et al., 1982; Neuliep and Hazelton, 1985), interpersonal power (Leichty and Applegate, 1991; Sagrestano, 1992; Wang, 2011), and rational/emotional approaches (Higgins and Walker, 2012; Holt and MacPherson, 2010; Petty, Favrigar, and Wegener, 2003; Zinn and Manfredo, 2000) have been carried out to explore persuasive

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communication in a variety of settings such as family, workplace, classroom, mass media, etc. Furthermore, in terms of the persuasion between lovers and couples, studies have also been conducted in the past to examine how persuasive strategies are used to influence the decision or behavior of romantic partners (Bronner and Hoog, 2008;

Christopher and Frandsen, 1990; Kim and Lee, 1996; Kirchler, 1990; McCormick, 1979;

Noar, Morokoff, and Harlow, 2004; Oriña, Wood, and Simpson, 2002; Zvonkovic, Schmiege, and Hall, 1994). These studies explored the persuasive communication between romantic partners in the context of sexual behavior engagement, marital satisfaction, and important purchase decisions (i.e., home/car/new furniture purchase and family vacation decision-making).

After reviewing these studies, we may notice that persuasion is a widely studied topic that has attracted the attention of researchers from various disciplines.

Nevertheless, a number of limitations still remain in the literature.

First, although many studies had been carried out to examine the use of persuasive strategies, the methods adopted in most of these studies (i.e., questionnaires, discourse completion tests, and role-plays) were unable to provide observations on how these strategies were used in real-time communications. The self-reported and the experimental/hypothetical nature of the methodology prevented previous researchers from gaining a realistic picture on how verbal and nonverbal strategies are adopted in

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persuasive communication.

Second, previous studies examined persuasive strategies only on a sentential level and did not view the persuasion as a conversational process. As mentioned before, persuasion is an interactive process, in which persuasive strategies are strategically planned to achieve the goal of influencing others. Thus, persuasion should be examined on a discourse level and the use of persuasive strategies should be investigated as a series of deliberate verbal and nonverbal planning by which the speakers attempts to accomplish their objectives of influencing others.

Third, although studies have been conducted in the past to inspect the persuasion between lovers and married couples, they focused more on persuasion events in everyday life and not the important persuasive conversations pertaining to the development of relationships. As discussed before, romantic confession is one of the earliest and most important conversations between potential couples. When making a confession, one confesses his/her affection towards the other person, indicates his/her willingness to commit, as well as attempts to persuade the other person to become romantically involved with him/her. Despite the fact that some understanding on the persuasive behavior of everyday events between couples was gained in previous studies, many questions regarding how persuasion may be used to negotiate and establish romantic relationships still remained unanswered.

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Last, past studies were often persuader-centered and rarely investigated the role of the people being persuaded. Again, persuasion is an interactive process by which one tries to influence another person’s attitude or behavior. While a bulk of studies had emphasized on studying the production of persuasive strategies from the perspective of the persuader, the refusal or acceptance strategies adopted in a persuasion from the perspective of the person being persuaded were often overlooked. Even if studies on the perceived effectiveness of persuasive strategies were conducted (DeTurk and Miller, 1983; Burgoon, Dillard, and Doran, 1983; Fu and Yuki, 2002), they only provided discussions on the perception of persuasive strategy use and not on how the people

being persuaded verbally and non-verbally participated in the persuasion. Considering how persuasion is an “interactive” process, the role and the participation of the

persuaded should also be taken into consideration when studying strategy use in persuasive communication.

2.3 Refusal and Acceptance

Refusal and acceptance are often the responses that a speaker gives to reject or accept another speaker’s persuasion in the interactive process of persuasive communication (Gass and Houck, 1999). In other words, they are the responses given by the people being persuaded during the process of persuasion. Previous studies in

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conversation analysis have found that refusal and acceptance follow quite different patterns in naturally occurring conversations (Heritage, 1984; Kitzinger and Frith, 1999).

While acceptance would generally be immediate, direct, and straightforward, refusals would often be somewhat delayed, subtle, and lengthy. The complexity of refusal may be due to its comparatively more face-threatening, impolite, and “dispreferred” nature (Gass and Houck, 1999; Sifianou; 2012). In order to mitigate the situation, “refusals are often played out in lengthy sequences involving not only negotiation of a satisfactory

outcome, but face-saving maneuvers to accommodate the noncompliant nature of the act.” (Gass and Houck, 1999:2). The complexity and unique nature of refusals have

further sparked interests among linguistics researchers to study the strategic verbal/nonverbal planning as well as the effects of cultural and gender regulations on the maintenance of face and politeness in refusals. As a result, more studies on refusals have been carried out compared those on acceptance.

In the studies of refusal, the model that is perhaps the most well-known and frequently cited is the Classification of Refusals developed by Beebe and her colleagues (Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Takahashi and Beebe, 1987). Their studies were designed to examine the pragmatic competence and transfer of Japanese learners of English. Through analyzing the written content of refusals to 12 situations (i.e., 3 requests, 3 invitations, 3 offers, and 3 suggestions) produced by these speakers, the

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researchers categorized refusal responses into semantic formulas of direct and indirect refusal strategies that can be used to perform a refusal as well as adjuncts that accompany but do not perform a refusal. Their study and classification have inspired a line of researches adopting and extending the model to examine the pragmatic competence and transfer manifested in the refusals produced by language learners of different native tongues (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford, 1991; Allami and Naeimi, 2011;

Chang, 2009; Lyuh, 1994; Yang, 2008).

Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that there are also researchers that established taxonomies and approaches of their own to probe into the subject of refusal (Bresnahan, Cai, and Rivers, 1994; Kline and Floyd, 1990; Liao, 1994; Liao and

Bresnahan, 1996). Kline and Floyd (1990), for instance, analyzed 320 undergraduate students’ response to a refusal task and developed a nine-level coding system that could

serve as the theoretical framework for refusals messages. Or as in the study of Liao (1994), a list of refusal strategies that are commonly practiced by speakers of Mandarin Chinese was created using a series of elicitation techniques such as interviews, participant observations, discourse completion tests, etc.

In the conversation between lovers or (potential) couples, the amount of literature on the refusal responses to requests or persuasions is even more limited in numbers.

These researches were often conducted to examine the use and effectiveness of refusal

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skills adopted by women in the settings of unwanted sexual advances initiated by male dating partners. The findings from these studies have contributed greatly to date rape prevention and the design of assertiveness training and social skill programs for young women (Byers, 1988; Kitzinger and Frith, 1999; Muehlenhard, Andrews, and Beal, 1996). In the study of Muehlenhard, Andrews, and Beal (1996), it was learned from 424 self-reports of men participated in the research that even after prior communication about sexual limits, a high percentage of men would still attempt to initiate sexual

behaviors during dates. Moreover, refusal responses (“I’m tired and I have to get up early” “No!” “This is rape, and I’m calling the cops.” etc.) given by women during the

date were effective to varying degrees, but giving these responses would sometimes risk influencing the relationship negatively. Kitzinger and Frith (1999) stated in their studies that young women often struggle to reject unwanted sex due to multiple social or psychological reasons. In computer-mediated communication, a study on the strategies used to refuse requests for romantic dates was also carried out to examine how the features in dating website allow new ways for romantic rejection in the dating context (Tong and Walther, 2010).

Although related studies on refusal and acceptance can still be found in the literature, some problems remain to be solved. First, similar to the limitations of persuasion studies discussed in the previous section, most of the studies on refusal and

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acceptance acquired their data through interviews, questionnaires, discourse completion tests, and self-disclosure, instead of recordings from real-time conversations between interlocutors. Although these methods are effective in controlling the context and gaining data directly related to the topic of study, they are less likely to reflect the verbal and nonverbal behaviors in actual situations. Second, previous literature examined refusal and acceptance strategies only on a sentential level and not the entire

conversational process. Since refusal and acceptance are made to reject or accept another person’s persuasion, they should also be studied as an interactive process, in

which verbal and nonverbal tactics are strategically adopted to achieve the goal of refusal or acceptance. Lastly, despite the fact that previous studies have been conducted to examine the refusal between potential couples, the number and the extensiveness of studies on the refusal and acceptance in romantic discourse is scarce in numbers to provide us a full understanding of the couple’s response to persuasion, request, invitations, etc. As reviewed earlier, the main concerns of these studies were only on the refusal to sex or date initiation and not on how the use of refusal and acceptance strategies affects the development of romantic relationships.

Aiming to fill the research gap in persuasion, refusal, and acceptance studies as well as enrich the field of romantic discourse, our study seeks to examine the persuasive strategies adopted by romantic confessors and the refusal and acceptance strategies used

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by romantic confessees to co-construct the discourse of romantic confession. With a huge amount of data collected from reality dating show and concepts drawn from conversation analysis studies, we are able to provide a conversational-based observation and develop models on the specific communicative strategies (i.e., persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies) used in romantic confessions. Furthermore, we also present a more generic analysis on the discourse structure of romantic confession so that the co-construction and interaction between interlocutors can be discussed on a macro level.

It is the goal of the present study to suggest the importance of establishing romantic discourse in linguistics studies so that we can further probe into the dynamics between language and romantic/interpersonal relationship.

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The chapter presents the method of data collection, the theoretical framework, and the proposed models (i.e., model of persuasive strategies used by romantic confessors, model of refusal strategies used by romantic confessees, and model of acceptance strategies used by romantic confessees) adopted in the study to investigate and analyze the discourse of romantic confessions.

3.1 Data Collection

The data of this research is collected from a reality dating TV show 非常完美 Perfect Dating. This show is produced by 貴州衛視 Guizhou TV (GTV) and is first

aired in China on November 22^nd, 2011. In 2013, the show was introduced to Taiwanese audience by 中天綜合台 CTi Variety, a satellite cable channel operated by 中天電視 Chung T'ien Television in Taiwan. In addition, GTV has also started live streaming and

uploading full episodes of Perfect Dating on its official YouTube² channel – 非常完美 官方频道 Perfect Dating Official Channel – since the year of 2013. Ever since then,

the show has continued to gain popularity in China and Taiwan, as well as many overseas Chinese communities in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.

Perfect Dating welcomes women to come as guests and interact with regular male

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cast members³ on the show so that they would get a chance to find someone they like and eventually confess their feelings and establish a romantic relationship with their love interests. For each female guest that comes to the show, she will generally have 30 minutes to introduce herself, interact with the regular male cast members, and receive/make confession from/to male confessor(s). The entire process will be carried out in 9 mini-segments: (1) 才藝表演 ‘Talent Performance,’ (2) 愛情宣言 ‘Love Declaration,’ (3) 遊戲互動 ‘Interaction through Games,’ (4) 選擇心動與不心動男生

‘Choose Dream Man and the Least Dreamy Man,’ (5) 影片訊息 ‘Video Information,’

(6) 文字訊息 ‘Text Information,’ (7) 私密問答 ‘Private Q & A,’ (8) 為愛轉身 ‘Turn around for Love,’ and (9) 告白時間 ‘Confession Time’ (See Appendix A for more

details on the format and the mini-segments of the show).

The data of the current study consists of all the episodes⁴ aired and uploaded onto its official YouTube channel from October to December 2015. The average length of the episodes is 85 – 95 minutes and each confession is about 8 – 12 minutes. In total, 107 confessions are identified in the 26 episodes (approximately 20 hours of confession time out of the total 39-hour full episode time) included in the data. In each confession, there

3 In the show, a group of men is selected as the regular male cast members. Since these men are mostly doing the show on the side and still have their own jobs or other businesses to attend to, sometimes a few of them might not be able to participate regularly in the filming process of the show. Thus, the 15 regular male cast members on the show slightly vary from week to week. New cast members will be added to the show when an original member of the cast successfully establishes a relationship with one of the female guests.

4 During the data collection period of our study, the show aired two episodes each week. Starting in 2016,

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are a confessor and a confessee. In our data, the confessors include 36 men (34 %) and 71 women (66 %), and the confessees comprise 71 men (66 %) and 36 women (34 %).

In terms of nationality, there are 17 Taiwanese (16 %), 82 Chinese (77 %), 5 overseas Chinese (5 %), and 3 foreign⁵ (3 %) confessors in the data. On the other hand, there are 26 Taiwanese (24 %), 66 Chinese (62 %), 7 overseas Chinese (7 %), and 8 foreign (7 %) confessees included in the study.

3.2 Theoretical Framework

The data acquired in the present study is transcribed and examined qualitatively and quantitatively with concepts drawn from Conversation Analysis (CA). In the 1960s, Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson initiated conversation analysis as an approach to studying how people organize and develop spoken discourse in everyday conversational interactions (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff and Sacks, 1973; Schegloff, 1982, 1986). Generally speaking, conversation analysis deals with both the specific phenomena observed in various situational contexts as well as the more general sequence of structure to investigate the effects of co-construction and conversational interaction in spoken discourse (Heritage, 1984; Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff and Sacks, 1973; Schegloff, 1982, 1986). According to

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Jacoby and Ochs (1995:175), the beauty behind co-construction is that it is “through the spontaneous playing out of the sequentially contingent and co-constructed, external flow of interactional events that human beings bring these conscious, semiconscious,

and unconscious internal constructs and potentialities to bear on the constitution, management, and negotiation of social reality and social relationships.”

Our objective is to probe into the specific strategies adopted by confessors and confessees to achieve communicative purposes in the context of romantic confession as well as the general sequence of structure of romantic confession discourse. We followed the Conversation Analysis Procedure as recounted by Seedhouse (2004) as our general guideline to study our data. First, we go through the data with an open mind to discover patterns and linguistic phenomena. In our study, we paid extra attention to the communicative strategies (i.e., persuasive, refusal, and acceptance) that were used by interlocutors in romantic confession. After a strategy has been identified, we move on to the next step and search through the entire data for more occurrences of the same phenomena, coding them as a specific strategy and building up our models (Please refer to Section 3.3 for more details on how the data is coded and the models we developed in our study). Next, we observe the patterns of strategy selection among interlocutors and examine how they are tactfully used to persuade, dissuade, or accept in the process of romantic persuasion. Finally, based on the patterns of strategy use in the context of

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romantic confession, we propose the discourse structure of romantic confession to further demonstrate the co-constructed and interactive nature in the context of romantic confession.

For the discourse structure of romantic confession, we draw concepts from William Labov’s analytical framework for narrative analysis (Labov, 1972; Labov and Waletzky,

1967) to study the overall structure of romantic confession between interlocutors.

Although the framework was designed to study oral recounts of personal experience, the fact that this method takes a more functional approach is suitable for our analysis of the more communicative and interactive context of our data. According to Labov (1972), the complete structure of a narrative follows a linear pattern and consists of the stages of abstract (i.e., the stage that explains what the event is generally about), orientation (i.e., the stage that provides the background details of the event), complicating action (i.e., the stage that presents further information as to what happened in the event), evaluation (i.e., the stage that elaborates on the meaning of the event), resolution (i.e., the stage that describes an ending to the event), and coda (i.e., the stage in which remarks are made to finish the narrative). Since this framework is targeted towards the analyses of the one-speaker based narrative, we extend this approach to a conversational level to better discuss the co-construction and conversational interaction between the interlocutors in romantic confession. Through analyzing the use of communicative strategies based on